" the cause of the fire was machinery that malfunctioned...."

Out of all the fires that occur in our industry we find machinery fires to be very scary. Because many times the fire cannot simply be extinguished by shutting the machinery off. In addition to extinguish a machinery fire commonly reHere is a recent story of a machinery fire:

It took crews two hours to snuff out a machinery fire at a local metal casting plant in the USA late one afternoon during the week of October 29, 2017.

Local fire department chief said city firefighters responded to a call at the casting plant at 5:12 p.m. 

On arrival, employees had already evacuated the facility — Local fire department chief estimated there were roughly 40 of them. But it took another two hours to figure out where the remaining flames were coming from as smoke continued to pour out of the building. 

"There was a lot of smoke just because of the amount of material in the actual machines, and the building is so large that it's hard to evacuate that much smoke in that short amount of time," Local fire department chief said.

Once they found it, it didn't take long to distinguish. "The plant is out of operation currently while they make sure all the systems are operating, and there are some electrical issues as far as with all the water," Local fire department chief said. "You can't just turn the power back on."

No injuries were reported from firefighters or civilians. Another fire department 10 kilometers away provided mutual aid, and the scene was clear by 7:24 p.m. Local fire department chief said the cause of the fire was machinery that malfunctioned. The fire began in one area, spreading through a connecting tube to another machine, as well as a "large hopper, which is essentially a big square tank," he said.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is glad that no worker nor fire department personnel was injured in this fire. We have posted numerous incidents involving machinery fires and hope that the reader will investigate their own plants. If a machinery occurs at your facility how will your personnel respond? How will your local emergency management services respond? If you cannot answer those questions, maybe you should reexamine your plants emergency management plan.

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